


A Cold One in the Mojave Tonight

by Baphomet_Pride



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Boone is a mess, Drinking, Eventual Romance, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, two guys chilling out in the lucky 38 5 feet apart because one isn't gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 17:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21360109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baphomet_Pride/pseuds/Baphomet_Pride
Summary: Boone steals a beer and has his heart stolen in return.
Relationships: Christine Royce/Veronica Santangelo, Craig Boone/Arcade Gannon
Kudos: 11





	1. Aster

A cold one

Its a scorching day in the Mojave almost makes you wish for…  
Don’t think about it, don’t you dare. You’re in the Lucky 38, Six is out exploring the “the big empty” whatever that is. You don’t want to, six’s adventures tend to take a turn for the chaotic and dangerous, and for once you just want to be able to sit down and drink a beer. In the air conditioned room. Cass, Christine, and Veronica are having a Girl’s Night for Lily. Raul is fixing a water pump out in Primm, and probably complaining about it all the time. Rex and E-DE are curled up in the far room, sleeping and beeping.  
So it’s just me  
and

“BOONE DID YOU TAKE THAT BEER, THE ONE THAT I SPECIFICALLY WROTE ARCADE ON. THE ONE THAT I HAD TO FIRST CONVINCE SIX THAT SETTING UP A HYDROPONICS LAB IN FREESIDE, THEN CONVINCE HER TO GROW ASTER IN IT, JUST TO MAKE MY OWN BEER THAT ACTUALLY TASTES GOOD.”

I say “No.” but I don’t even try to hide the fact that I am in fact, drinking that beer. And God forgive me, its so good. Its so good that I shouldn’t feel bad about taking it, but… I do.

“Craig you don’t have to be such a bastard. I would’ve given you some if you asked, you insensitive prick.”

“Sorry,” it comes out weird, I’m not used to really communicating with people, even less dealing with emotions. “I forgot” I didn’t, but I wish I did.

“Okay, fine. Give me the rest at least.” 

“Fine, here.” I pass him the bottle, there’s at least half left, so he can’t be too mad. Our fingers brush against each other, and for a moment I feel like blushing. Only for a moment

“Thank you, Craig, so how was it, I figure before I start to make more batches I might as well have a trusted confidant test it” 

“It’s…. good, its so good. Its the best beer I’ve tasted since…. Ever. Whats in it.”

“Well water obviously, and Aster petals and roots. Aster is a flower you know”

I knew, but for some reason, I liked hearing that from him. 

“And razorgrain, most beers out here are made with whatever wild grass people find, pallid wheat if they’re lucky, but if you use an actual hearty grain you get something infinitely better. We use the grain, and feed the stems to brahmin. Its a cycle, the brahmin eat the grain, fertilize it, and when they die we grind their bones to fertilize it further. Somehow we’re bringing life back to the wasteland.”

I’m entranced, I know about all of this, Six has been running around trying to make all the settlements in the region self-sustaining, especially since the NCR formally recognized Vegas’ independence. People have been moving here, from NCR and from former Legion territory. Vegas is growing like a weed, and without NCR its blooming. I was so mad at first when Six decided at the last minute to coup the NCR on the dam, but she didn’t fire on them. She has a way with words. So I decided to stay, my tour of the NCR over. Stay here, try and help. Carla would’ve wanted it that way… 

“… and whats more the razorgrain has a degree of bitterness in it that means we don’t need to grow hops, so by just focusing on the razorgrain we’re able to use it 30% more efficiently. Craig, you zoned out a bit there.” Arcade was looking right at me, patiently like he normally does, how I like it… wait

“Oh yeah, just thinking about, stuff. You know.”

“Oh sure, lots of tough straight hetero not gay guy stuff. Your mind is truly an enigma.” I almost blushed, I wanted to, but I didn’t. I couldn’t let him know. 

“Look, what exactly does Aster even taste like, I thought it grew mostly out East.” I needed to change the subject. 

“At first its bitter, kinda like burnt oak, but as you ferment it, the taste lessens and it ends up tasting sweet and a little smokey, very smooth. Perfectly drinkable, just something you can’t get enough of. It took me a long time to learn to love the taste, but I learned.”

“Huh, but it doesn’t explain how the seeds got here” 

“The ruins of the bull bear fruit, people are carrying everything they had with them to the new promised land. In a way Vegas is the new Eden, vivat crescat floreat”

I scowled a bit, the language of the legion still stings to this day

“May it live, grow, flourish. That’s the motto of this chapter of the Mojave, we’ve been given the immense honor of having the chance to shape a future society. For all the pain and suffering inflicted upon it there is hope, the beginning is no longer the end. I think you and me most of all can relate, my friend.” 

“To a better future” I say

“For the Mojave, and for ourselves” and he tips his drink back, and for a second, I’m in lo-

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck. My cheeks are burning, I feel like I’m naked in the middle of the noonday sun. Arcade is looking away wistfully, so he doesn’t see me squirm. He suddenly reaches out and grabs my beret, and in one motion tips it on his head. He looks good in it. 

“That is for almost stealing my beer, you’ll get it back tomorrow if you’re good. I’ve got a book on sexual relations between soldiers in ancient Byzantium waiting for me. Good night, Boone” 

He quickly walks out, closing the door gently as he goes.  
I don’t make a movement for seven solid minutes  
I want to wake up, I don’t want to consider what just happened was real.  
But it was.  
And that is exactly what I’m afraid of.


	2. Thistle

“When did you know” I asked, gently tapping her on the shoulder.

“JESUS CHRIST” Christine yelled, dropping the piece of molerat meat she was taking out of the fridge, and pivoting into a perfect kick right into my liver. I dropped on the floor.

“What the fuck Boone, its 3AM, you can’t just pop up out of nowhere and grab me you fucking lunatic.” She says, quieter, hoping that nobody would wake up after her first panicked scream. 

“I deserved that, oh God I deserved that, the brotherhood really taught you how to kick” I winced, still writhing on the floor

“Yeah, and what they didn’t I learned in the field.” She said while extending her hand, helping me up despite the pain I’m still in, “Boone why the fuck are you up at 3AM”

“Couldn’t sleep” I say, limping towards the couch and gesturing her to sit down as well.

“Yeah me neither, look Boone I’m sorry about kicking you, but what is so important that you’d just haunt the living room waiting for me to make a midnight molerat run” She looks, bothered? I suppose I couldn’t blame her, I think most of them realized something was up with me. 

“I was hoping to find you, or Veronica, I have a few questions for you” 

“Questions that couldn’t wait until morning?” She flicks the old lamp on, the hazy orange light illuminating her, the angry red of her scars still visible on her scalp, after all this time. 

“No, questions that nobody else can know about” 

She leans forward, intrigued “That's serious, I know about the conversations you get up to with Arcade and Raul and you seem to talk to them about damn near everything”

“It’s about…. Its about a very personal subject that I’m still grappling with, you can understand why I want to keep this between you and me. I don’t want to rush into anything blind.”

“Alright, I promise Boone. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Assuming I actually know what you’re asking. Which I don’t so far.” She grabs at her pants pockets, wrangling out a loose cigarette and lighting it, staring at me like a therapist.

“When….. when did you know you weren’t straight.” I said it, hoping to God she wouldn’t laugh at me, for what a stupid juvenile question that was. I almost get ready to spring off the couch and run back to my room, and forget this whole thing. 

But she doesn’t react, she’s deep in thought for a few moments.

“I was 14, a junior initiate, some knights had lead an expedition and took us with them, they had found an old apartment complex that got unearthed after an earthquake, so we jaunted out there and searched the place, it was supposed to teach us about how scarce technology was, and the importance of recovering it.” She was digging deep, looking through the sands of time to remember what her life was like, ages ago. Simpler times, but not happier. Not compared to now. 

“Seems dangerous to take a bunch of kids through the wastes.” I said, trying to remember what I was like at that age, and failing at that.

“There were fully armored knights, and this was before we were shoot-on-sight with the NCR, before Elijah...” She sighs, and I wince, I heard what happened with him and Six. “Point is we weren’t on our own. But getting back to it, I was digging through a small apartment and it was getting close to the end of the day and I hadn’t found anything, but as I was digging through the rubble I found a small lockbox, I smashed open the rusted lock hoping to find something rare and forgotten, thinking I’d be the star of the day. All that was in it was a handful of old photos, a magazine, and a little chapbook of poetry. I shoved them in my robe, thinking I’d take them to the head scribe later and have him take a peak and see if they were worth saving. By the time I got back to my bunk at Archimedes-II I forgot about them, and I rifled through them late that night.”

“Let me guess, they were vacation photos with bikini babes on them?” I thought back to the unofficial currency of the NCR barracks. 

“No, nothing that classy. They were nudes, a handful artistic but mostly raunch. There were three or four women who seemed to pass the camera around, having fun with it. And there were a few of them kissing. I poured over those photos for hours, entranced, but more than that I felt jealous. I wanted to kiss girls like that, I wanted to be kissed like that. I didn’t look at the magazine until the next night, after I stashed my loot in the little locker we had. It was an old issue of Velvet, had a bunch of interviews with lesbians from before the war, gave me the first bit of vocabulary I had for myself: lesbian, confirmed spinster, butch. It was like seeing the sun for the first time.”

I hummed a bit, I realized I knew that feeling too. “And what was in the Chapbook?” 

“Sappho, the first poems I read to Veronica, back in the bunker”

I began to sit up, getting ready to thank Christine for her time

“Boone, I know why you asked me this. I’ve seen the way you’ve been acting around arcade.”

Fuck, god damn it does everyone know.

“Do not let him know. Not yet. I…. I have things to work out”

“Like what, you know that all of us are going to support you with whoever you end up being, what more do you need. You’re friends with the most powerful woman in Vegas, you’ve got unlimited opportunities to figure out who you are” She was genuinely confused, she wasn’t seeing the big picture.

“Its not that… its just, Carla. My wife, she passed on but… I’m still in love with her, and I feel like I’d be betraying her if I found new love.” Hot, angry tears began to well up in my eyes.

“Boone I can’t help you square that with yourself, that is something between you and yourself. But if you need a confidant beyond a friend, I know someone you could talk to, a man of God.”  


“Those are few and far between around here.”

“He’s up North, and a bit East of here-”

“No, fuck that, I’m not going to that fucking legion bastard. I don’t care what Six says about him being reformed, he’s unforgivable” I snapped at her, she should’ve fucking known what I think about him,

“Boone listen, there’s nobody who’s been through such a transformation like him, there’s nobody who knows how you can remake yourself, how to fight your past. You can hate him as hard as you can, but there’s nobody who could hate the old him more than his current self.” She’s exasperated

She’s right

“I have to go to bed, think about this. This conversation never leaves tonight, got it.” I march back to my room, but I hear her cough, and turn around.

“The hard part isn’t getting somewhere, its letting go. I should know, so should you. Get some sleep, think about it.” And with that she heads in the opposite direction, back towards a sleeping Veronica and the warmth that she brings. 

I walk into the bed, and fall into it, but with all the thoughts spinning through my head its like laying in a bed of thistles, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune jabbing me at every opportunity. I think of his face, his blond hair, and the way he laughs. And the thistles begin to wither. I keep thinking about what Christine said, about letting go, and as I fall into the warm embrace of nothingness I remember what Arcade let go, the gleam of Enclave Steel the last thing I see before the numbness of sleep overtakes me.

**Author's Note:**

> The key to making heterosexual characters interesting is to make them come to terms with the fact that they're gay


End file.
